Boris Bare - Pimp my Peace / Preuredi moj mir

On Saturday, September 21, 2024, at 5:30 p.m. in the Antun Augustinčić Gallery in Klanjec, we opened the exhibition BORIS BARE - PIMP MY PEACE / PREUREDI MOJ MIR and a mural on Trg mira 2 in Klanjec, which was realized as part of the With Peace for Peace event 2024 on the occasion of the International Day of Peace and the 70th anniversary of the Augustinčić Peace Monument in New York.

As the only museum in Croatia, the Antun Augustinčić Gallery celebrates the International Day of Peace on September 21 for the fifteenth year in a row. As part of our long-term program With Peace for Peace, we continuously present art, primarily sculptural, works that refer to the theme of peace and to Augustinčić's Peace monument in the park of the United Nations headquarters in New York, whose sketch and plaster model are in the Gallery's permanent display. In this way, we adequately contribute to the spread of the peace-making spirit and enable the comparison of different artistic expressions. Precisely in the year in which we celebrate the 70th anniversary of Augustinčić's monumental monument, we give the floor to independent street artist and activist Boris Bare.

Boris Bare was born on June 20, 1981 in Zagreb, where he grew up and lives. He graduated from the hospitality and tourism school in 1989, so in the early nineties he started to enter the world of street art. Street art will not remain the only field of his creative expression, but he will naturally move in the direction of artistic activism. In 2010, he will gather a collective called Pimp My Pump - whose activities will be formalized in 2014 with the founding of the association Preuredi moju pumpa - with the idea of ​​preserving the city's old water pumps and promoting cultural heritage. Over 60 public city faucets were painted, which became one of the most notable artistic street interventions in Zagreb and resulted in a series of participation in art events and festivals. In 2016, a new team project, Art Park, will begin in the center of Zagreb, which will change the face of the city in the coming years, also imbued with the idea of ​​preservation and renewal. As part of the Art Park project, several city parks were revitalized and hundreds of meters of walls were enlivened with murals by Croatian and foreign artists. In parallel with the mentioned projects, Bare also painted numerous independent murals in cities throughout Croatia, neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, but also around the world - such as Bogota and Medellín in Colombia or Berlin. Every day, he continues to be inspired by everything that surrounds him, with street walls remaining his favorite canvas.

With the impulse with which he painted Zagreb's city water pumps with the collective Pimp My Pump, and in accordance with the spirit of preservation and restoration of his organization Preredi moju pumpa, at our instigation Bare creates a work which is analogously called Pimp My Peace (Preuredi moj mir) he intervenes artistically and meaningfully on a plaster cast of a bronze sketch of the master's monument, thus revitalizing the very idea of ​​peace. And he expresses the full expression of the street artist in his natural urban environment with a large mural on the unrenovated part of the facade of the building on the Peace Square in Klagenfurt, as a permanent reminder of the necessity of peace in the world.

The exhibition, which can be viewed until November 21, 2024, was realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, and the mural was created in partnership with the City of Klanjec and with the support of the Krapina-Zagorje County.